Researchers Develop Bendable Battery

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed.

While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

"We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI said in a telephone interview.

Unlike other batteries, Linhardt explained, it is an integrated device, not a combination of pieces.

The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes, the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.

Just imagine if they could make this flexible enough to make clothes out of it. Your jacket could double as a power supply for your phone, laptop, or media player. With batteries this thin, you could conceivably put them just about anywhere.

Heh…since these aren’t Lithium Ion cells, I’m not as worried about fire. And given how thin they are, they should be pretty good at dissipating heat. In fact, that could be an advantage in wintertime…combo heater and battery!